Wonderland
by Canadino
Summary: In a world of white, Brinker can't find anything to assure himself that he is, in fact, still alive. post-canon, slight Brinker/Leper


**Disclaimer: The only thing I own is the story idea and only some of the witty remarks. I own so little; so please don't steal.**

Background music: -

Wonderland

It's funny how fate works, because just as the snow starts falling in big fat flakes, Brinker Hadley enters the general store off the main road to get some gas for the long trip home from a Vermont trip and runs into Mrs. Lepellier, who is frantically warbling to the clerk at the desk about some big commotion. Leper is (was) Brinker's classmate and he feels obligated to at least greet the woman. She looks at him like a savior from the heavens.

"Brinker Hadley! Thank God you came!"

Now Brinker has always wanted someone to say that to him, but these circumstances doesn't appear to want to play out as he had imagined. She pulls him out of the store before he can even get the clerk to unfreeze the pump and ushers him into her car before he can put up a fuss. Manners and etiquette prevent him from reminding her that she is inconveniencing him; she talks over his silent displeasure.

"Elwin's gone missing!" She clarifies: a half hour or so ago, her son had roamed from the dining room to the kitchen, to the foyer, where she remembered him asking where his snow boots were. She had absent-mindedly told him on the fifth stair to the basement and heard moments later the backdoor opening and closing. When she looked outside, the snow clouds were building and her only son was wandering toward the woods. She had not thought much of this – Leper was always going outside at strange times – but when she went outside to call him in for lunch, he was no where to be found.

"Are you sure he's lost?" Brinker asks. She never uses 'lost', as she finds it impossible for her son, who was raised in the wilds of Vermont, to be really 'lost', but he hears the insinuation. The backseat is stuffy and cramped. His scarf is wound around his neck like a noose. She drives recklessly, her mind elsewhere. He bites back a comment to avoid appearing to be an overbearing backseat driver.

The Lepellier house stands like a gingerbread fortress in the middle of a picturesque field, a road-that-was-probably-paved-a-couple-years-ago leading up to the shack of a garage. The snow is coming down like the snow globe of a hyperactive two-year-old. As they trek back to the house to recoup, Brinker opens his mouth to breathe and gets a mouthful of snow.

"Elwin?" She tears off her boots and disappears into the house, her voice carrying through as a trail to where she is. Brinker politely sheds his coat and snow-covered boots, leaving them a dripping mess at the doormat. He calmly goes to the kitchen and puts some water on the stove. His mother always said boiling water during a crisis helped one think. Mrs. Lepellier stumbles into the kitchen, looking close to tears.

"My husband cannot get home," she says, as Brinker stares at her from the stove. "The snow trapped him at work. I can't even call the police!" The helplessness of her situation reminds Brinker of the same helplessness he saw before, years ago, during the Finny trial. She sinks into a wooden chair and Brinker's mouth opens and speaks for him, disconnecting from his brain.

"I'll go look for him, ma'am."

[=]

She finds a long spool of red thread. It is thick and dependable, woven nearby from the wool farms of Vermont. Brinker is suited up with thick parka and tight hat; Mrs. Lepellier finds better snow boots fit for the snows of the state. His gloves make it hard for him to make a fist.

She ties one end of the spool to his wrist, tightly, assuring him that the only thing that can break the knot is scissors. She unravels the entire spool, careless, taking the other end to a fence post and tightly securing it as well. The slack falls to the ground in a heap of red, contrasting brightly with the snow. "He won't have gotten that far," she says, her face flickering in and out from the thick flakes that are limiting both their lines of vision. "Come back if there is no slack left."

Brinker nods, and this itself is a chore.

She points to the ground. There are slight imprints, where boots might have trod earlier. "Follow them. But I don't think it will do much good. It has been showing for so long and so hard that…" She doesn't dare let herself finish her sentence. "I will wait for the two of you. I've called the hospital so the moment the snow clears up, they will come to find you."

"I will find him," Brinker says, although he doesn't know where this confidence is coming from. He feels the Vermont air finding the cracks that he couldn't cover with thick cloth, and it's chilling him to the bone. She nods, shivering, and he turns and plants his boots into the fading boot prints. After reaching the trees, he turns. The red thread flashes at him from the snow and Mrs. Lepellier is watching him, a huddled dark mass amiss the flurries. He keeps walking forward, past the whitening trunks, his feet crunching in the snow. When he turns around again, the dark figure is farther away and the red is disappearing under the blankets of snow. He keeps going, and when he turns around again, he cannot see the house anymore.

[=]

All is white around him. Brinker keeps one hand forward after running into a sturdy tree. The snow is coming down, not harder than before, but not softer. He turns in all directions and finds that everything around him looks the same – maybe the trees differ in shapes than the trees yards behind him, but all he can really distinguish is the crazy, sporadic movements of snow around him and dark shadows of trees.

He quickly finds that calling for Leper is not a fruitful operation. His voice is lost in the white, swallowed up greedily by the barrage. Sometimes he does not know if he really called out, or if he is just imagining it. He goes through the motions – yes, he remembers moving his mouth. Then a moment more in the white, and he questions himself, did he really?

Brinker feels confused. He never questions himself like this, especially when there are no concrete answers. He comforts himself by calling out, casting out sounds to the wind as if he is contributing somewhat to the scheme of things, almost waiting for someone to answer back. He doesn't know if it will be Leper, or God, or Finny, but when he perks his ears, he hears nothing. The snow has swallowed up any answer.

[=]

With all this movement, he is expecting some sort of sound: anything, really, the sounds of flakes colliding brutally in the air. The wind whistling through the trees and the hard winter cracking its whip. Falling trees; the sky falling – anything, really. But now that everything is quiet among white and fall, Brinker almost knows why Leper went crazy. He can't even tell when he is thinking. His mind is buzzing, and he can't tell if it's his head, or the wind around him, or even where he is. He glances back habitually and sees the red thread keeping him on course.

Nothing around him moves but the air; the air is thick with snow. Brinker wishes he brought goggles or glasses. He cannot even look into the direction he is heading; he has to cock his head and use his peripheral vision to see where he is going. He has walked around trees and rocks and he can't even tell if he is going in the straight or right direction. Is Leper here, anyway? How could anyone survive in this wilderness?

He tugs his wrist forward and sees the red and it comforts him. In a world of white, his clothes covered with the color, the red is the only thing reminding him what he is here for.

The snow makes him recall the Winter Games. The ruckus of a class full of boys outside in the safe, secure grounds. The hardy Devon gates surrounded the place. There were people to pluck you out and put you right. He remembers the buzz of the alcohol he had contributed. He tries to remember if Leper had participated. Was it before or after he had left to join the ski corps? Brinker refuses to believe he might have forgotten.

He wants to sit down and let the snow cover him. Certainly the spontaneous motions around him is making him disoriented. But he is feeling disheartened and damper; he is cold and there is nothing around him. There is nothing really stopping him from turning around and following the red thread faithfully to the back of the Lepellier residence and saying he couldn't find Leper - that it was useless to look in such weather. He is tired of feeling tired and baffled.

If he doesn't appear in five steps, Brinker thinks, I will go back. And five more steps. And five more.

[=]

Brinker finds Leper Lepellier huddled in a small, shivering pile after maybe fifty steps. He is not wearing a hat and there is a small pile of snow sitting on his damp, blonde locks. White flakes stick to his eyelashes and he is staring listlessly at a spot in the snow. He looks like something left in the forest by accident and is waiting patiently for its owner to come back and claim it – time passes it by. Brinker kneels down to make sure Leper is not too far gone.

A hand on the boy's shoulder has no reaction. Brinker shakes the unresponsive young man for a couple moments before the blue eyes blink away from their spot and he turns his head, slowly, like he is just relearning how to work his joints again, and he smiles – laughs even. "Ah, sorry colonel. I forgot my skis back at the dorms. I thought I could follow the others and…" His laughs are shakes, spastic jerking of his shoulders. "I'll bring everything else next time; my skis, my gloves, my map, my gun…"

He stops when Brinker leans forward and kisses him, pressing into his cold lips, the snow still gently dropping around them. Although his mouth is not too much better, he hopes maybe he can bring some warmth back to Leper's lips. Bring back the warmth, the life, bring him back from the war that he cannot escape even though it has been over for two years. Leper opens his mouth and what he says is taken by the snow. _Brinker_. He closes his eyes, and Brinker is struck with the image that perhaps the snow has glued his eyes shut so he can no longer see what troubles him. Leper does not open his eyes as he helps him to his feet. Brinker checks his wrist, sees the bright, wet red and tugs it along, keeping his focus on the lifeline.

It is better the return trip, with something to follow.

[=]

Mrs. Lepellier seizes her son in her arms and holds him for a long time. Brinker stands, watching and feeling awkward, the pool of red at his feet. The snow is letting up, and he can see the greens and brown around him under all the white.

It is late when it is settled that Leper is in no immediate life-threatening danger. He curls up in the dining room, refusing to talk to his mother or old classmate. Relieved, Mrs. Lepellier makes them all tea and cries when her husband returns, frantic and damp. The ambulance stops by for a moment, confirming that Leper is fine; he just has been chilled and should be left to thaw. The medic proclaims it a miracle and thanks Brinker. Any longer and he might have died.

Mr. Lepellier offers to drive Brinker back to the gas station the next morning so he can get home. He uses the telephone to assure his fretting mother that he is fine, he just helped avert a crisis, and he will be back by the afternoon tomorrow. Mrs. Lepellier offers him to stay. She brings him up to Leper's old bedroom. It smells like dust motes and time. She leaves to get some fresh laundry and he is left standing in the middle of the unused room.

There are withering house plants that Brinker thinks Mrs. Lepellier has not tended to in a while; in fact, he has a sense from the odd way his feet hits the ground that no one has really been in this room for a long time. He heard from Gene that Leper had been lingering in his house in strange mannerisms. He runs his hands over the dusty books and the untouched papers and pictures. The curtains awaken from rigor motus when he shifts them. The magnifying glass and strange insect specimens assure him that Leper used to love this room. Before the war took him.

"I almost thought you were him," he hears Mrs. Lepellier say softly behind him. When he turns, the woman looks much older than he remembered seeing her earlier in the day. "When you were standing at the desk. I thought…maybe Leper had come back."

Brinker knows the motions and the things he is expected to say. But instead, he says, "The war made everything different." He doesn't go for comfort or explanation; he becomes Captain Obvious.

She nods. She puts the towels for a shower and a change of clothes on a nearby chair and looks around the room, as if she is just moving in. "Please don't hesitate to ask me for anything," she says shortly before disappearing downstairs. Brinker looks at the freshest things in the room, the new laundry, and leans back on the desk and feels like crying himself.

[=]

The house is dark and silent. Brinker cannot sleep and he creeps downstairs. Snow flakes are falling again, gently in the night sky. There is no sound of cars or society in the area. In fact, there isn't even a streetlamp to show that anything comes by this side of town. The floorboards do not creek and Brinker floats over them, making his way to the dining room.

He might not have known that anyone was in it, if a chair had not been pulled back and the flood of blankets from underneath the dining table were not poking out onto the floor. He walks up to the hole, the door of Leper's new room, and squats. Leper is wrapped up tightly in several blankets and sleeping, his glasses still perched on his nose. Brinker watches him for a while, straining to see his breaths, before climbing into his fort.

Brinker remembers playing forts like this when he was younger. He had used the undersides of tables to be the ceiling of an important war game, planning schemes for the Germans. Later, when his mother needed the table to entertain guests, he draped a large bedsheet over a couple chairs and pretended he was in a tent in Europe, waiting for the call to action. He wishes he never played such nonsense now.

Leper is cold, even under the blankets. Brinker crawls up next to him and lies there. The chair legs around them provide a false sense of security. "Are you really there?" he whispers, and Leper is still in reply. The floor is stiff under his back and he wonders for a moment if he had done this at Devon. He would have never lived it down. Suddenly he feels like he could sleep here for days, instead of the bed that had been lumpy and strange against his body. Leper does not move when he wraps himself in the blankets that smell like fabric softener. _Good night_ turns into "Are you alive?" and he closes his eyes.

End

[=]

Note: I like to think that after WW2, Brinker mellowed out somewhat. Isn't this just dripping with imagery and hidden meanings. Don't try and analyze it; take it at face value. At first, this was supposed to be a happy sort of fic in modern times with the two of them stuck in the car, but I guess the snow is just making me feel stuffed and melancholy. So here you have this instead. I'll try and finish my fem!verse SP soon. Huh. Thanks for reading!


End file.
